GOP Senate candidate: Rape pregnancy is God's intent

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"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." — Richard Mourdock, Indiana Republican senate candidate.

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Unfortunately I am not sure that is the case. I live in Indiana and have been following this race. Mourdock has consistently been ahead by 3-4 points. I am not sure this comment will have the same legs as Akin’s.
There is always a chance though, especially since Lugar was almost universally liked and his Tea Party-backed primary defeat was seen by even conservative Hoosiers to be a bad thing. At the very least it will a closer race than it would have been.

Well, technically, he’s correct: if your god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then he must have intended for the rape and pregnancy to occur. Which just demonstrates not only that this guy is batshit crazy, but the “other” christians who have decided that their all-powerful god actually doesn’t believe rape is OK yet somehow allows it to happen are also batshit crazy. You can’t have it both ways folks: either everything is caused by an all-powerful god or nothing is.

“Oh, you were raped? Well, here’s an extremely intimate reminder of the traumatic encounter that you’ll be physically stuck with for the next nine months, plus another decade and a half at minimum emotionally. Oh, and if you decline my ‘gift’ you go to hell. Aren’t I just the greatest ever?”

Why anyone would want to worship a sociopath I cannot understand, but it’s just as incomprehensible to me that people figure out ways to tap dance around the idea that their god is omniscient/potent/present and yet somehow isn’t actually responsible for anything that happens.

I’m not a religouse person but I can see that belief in a god doesn’t absolve you of personal responsibility. If you believe in god, you also believe he created us. That comes with inteligence and the free will to do what we want. Free will is a rather nice thing to have, unfortunate side effect is also the ability to do bad things. it’s up to us to use that free will and inteligence to treat each other right and help people. Religon is seen by believers as a way to help us to do that.

Again, I’m not religouse, but I would never go so far as to paint people who do believe as a bunch of nutters who think that they carry no personal responsibility, that’s just not the case.

That comes with inteligence and the free will to do what we want. Free will is a rather nice thing to have, fortunate side effect is also the ability to do bad things.

The concept of “free will” is incompatible with the concept of “omnipotence”. It’s like the puzzle “what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object?” It can’t actually happen because both concepts can’t coexist in the same universe. The existence of one logically precludes the other.

Free will is a fraught philosophical concept and I’m sick of people using it as a “get out of the logical consequences of my worldview free” card.

My philosophy isn’t up to scratch, but I’m a little confused (not refuting, just looking for clarification). Does omnipotence insist that the being *does* do everything or *can* do anything? If the latter, then how is it incompatible with free will? I understand that it suggests that the being is either a) uncaring b) hands off management or c) ‘mysterious’, but how is it incompatible?

I think both “omnipotence” and “free will” are incoherent concepts. The fact that they’re logically incompatible is kind of a detail from my perspective.

But a simple rebuttal to your argument might go: if we have free will then God can’t interfere with our intentions or actions. If God cannot interfere with our intentions or actions He is not omnipotent (because there is something he *cannot* do). The two premises are simply logically incompatible.

“…if we have free will then God can’t interfere with our intentions or actions. If God cannot interfere with our intentions or actions He is not omnipotent (because there is something he *cannot* do). The two premises are simply logically incompatible.”

Christian apologists could argue that if we have free will, then God *decides* not to interfere with our intentions or actions. It doesn’t necessarily mean the character is incapable of interfering.

I think individuals could have free will, and it still wouldn’t absolve their omniscient, omnipotent creator from being directly responsible for all of the evil acts that he must have foreseen his created creatures carrying out.

Christian apologists could argue that if we have free will, then God *decides* not to interfere with our intentions or actions. It doesn’t necessarily mean the character is incapable of interfering.

So “free will” by this definition just means “God chooses not to interfere with my personal autonomy.” One of many reasons why the concept of “free will” really just doesn’t make sense. It means whatever the person making the argument wants it to mean.

Omnipotence merely means you have the power to do what ever you want, it doesn’t mean you have to use that power at all times for everything.

It all depends on how you view God. As a sort of nanny person who has to govern your every action. Or as your creator whome you can look to for guidance or who you can ignore. Or maybe your religouse views don’t even have a god at all. It’s far too simplistic to eqeuate the views of radicals to the views of all religouse people.

Free will vs omnipotence leads to discussions of determinism. As in, if God is omnipotent, then he/she knows everything and knows everything that will happen, including what choices you will make in your life. Therefore, do we really have free will if our future path is already determined and perceived by an omnipotent God? (That’s a really simplistic explanation of determinism, and probably garbled a bit, as well.)

It’s far too simplistic to eqeuate the views of radicals to the views of all religouse people.

Where did I do that?

Omnipotence merely means you have the power to do what ever you want, it doesn’t mean you have to use that power at all times for everything.

If you actually think through what “omnipotence” means you’ll probably see that it doesn’t actually make any sense in the first place. How do you distinguish “self” from “other”? How do you tell yourself apart from your surroundings? Now imagine being able to move anything in the universe as if it was part of your own body. How do you distinguish “self” from “other” in that situation?

Besides that, as I pointed out above, you’re not describing “free will” — you’re describing “contingent will”. Under this idea, God chooses not to prevent you from doing what you want to do; you really have no say in the matter. Hitchens said something like: “Of course we have free will. The boss demands it.”

“As in, if God is omnipotent, then he/she knows everything and knows everything that will happen, including what choices you will make in your life.”

That depends on the nature of “everything that will happen” and if “everything that will happen” really is a superposition, then knowing “everything that will happen” need not mean knowing which part of “everything that will happen” is really really realer than the rest because they’re all real.

1) II was talking about the free will of the deity in question, not of humans.

2) When a child is raped by his/her father, is this because they freely chose to be born into that family and therefore have to accept the consequences of their actions? Or are they to celebrate their god-given fate?

In other words, how is rape a matter of “personal responsibility” for the VICTIMS? Where does an omniscient/potent/present god’s actions or non-actions fit into that scenario?

So, uh.. our free will is more powerful than God’s will? I just always hear about “God’s plan” and other horseshit from Christians, so I’m not sure how this human free will business is compatible. It must be really confusing to be a religious nut.

Also he is internally consistent. If a fertilized egg is to be afforded the full rights of a human being who cares how it was conceived? Those that appose abortion except in cases of rape or incest are proposing that it may be ok to kill a human depending on how it was conceived. But yeah, batshit crazy people say batshit crazy stuff.

That’s ultimately the problem with any dogma. There are not immutable laws of morality that always apply in every situation under any circumstances. Once you start to say there are you find those edge cases where you’re forced to support atrocities by your unwavering commitment to your dogma. It seems fairly obvious that abortion should be okay when the mother’s life is in danger and the child is likely to die anyway, but once you decide that a fertilized egg is a human life worth protecting you’re no longer allowed to make that choice.

The only way you can possibly do what you think is right is by occasionally contradicting the dogma you claim guides your life. Religion (and other dogmatic worldviews) are, by necessity, self-contradictory at some level because reality is never as neat and clean as we would want it to be. Even if you allow yourself to redefine your dogma and change it over time (which Christianity does a lot) you’re still contradicting yourself because a core tenant of most religions is the eternal truthfulness of it all. “God has always been right and God has always told us the same things, except when he totally didn’t tell us those things and eventually changed his mind,” doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in most believers. So they just ignore the fact that the religion they believe in today is only superficially related to the religion that was founded thousands of years ago.

Bottom line: He seems internally consistent, if you take a very narrow view of his beliefs. But if you really look at religion with anything other than tunnel vision, the myriad contradictions are impossible to ignore.

I personally admire Mourdock for this statement. He is plainly a man of upstanding intellectual integrity, willing to follow the argument wherever it leads, almost. He’s brave enough to draw very unpopular conclusions from commonly-held beliefs, so long as they don’t discomfit his own personal worldview.

they just think of new and better ways to avoid resonsibility for their actions. it’s god’s will and it’s the woman’s fault and she has to raise the bastard without any help from the guy who knocked her up. global warming? god’s will. hurricane katrina? god’s will. wildfires over texas? god’s will. sure they never bothered fixing the levees, they dismissed the volunteer fire department, and they tell women they should lie back and take it, but it’s not their fault, it’s god’s will. and god hates gays so this is really all my fault.

The problem with people of faith is that they confuse believing in something for being correct about something. That’s an extremely dangerous attitude and in my opinion it should have no place in politics. The political process should be all about providing the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people and the intelligent allocation of available resources to that end. Even worse than the faith/reality confusion, religious faith seems to be an excuse for outright ignorance. Todd Akin’s remarks about rape revealed him to be an uneducated person, and yet somehow the fact that the man didn’t know his basic 4th grade biology is not seen by his conservative religious supporters as a deterrent to his voting on health policy decisions that could potentially affect millions of women. I look at politics today (in the U.S and in my own country, Canada) and I feel mostly despair. Human and environmental welfare seem to be at the bottom of everyone’s list, and that just doesn’t make sense to me. Will things ever change, or is conservative religious culture too virulently memetic to ever be put in its rightful political place as a vocal minority that most people ignore..?

“The problem with people of faith is that they confuse believing in something for being correct about something.” Yes, this is true. It’s a tricky thing; if people agree with you then you must be following God’s will, and be correct. If people disagree with you, well, they don’t matter, the devil is in them and their opinions only lead to the fires of hell. So in the end, this sort of stuff only encourages people to NOT listen to each other. Which worries me because not everything conservatives say is batshit insane; there is good, honest logic in the rhetoric. This sort of stuff though, it’s so demeaning, EVERYTHING that the person says from there on out gets colored.

Where are these so-called sane conservatives though? Why aren’t they out there denouncing the GOP’s rampant assholery? (I’m not saying sane conservatives don’t exist… just why don’t we ever hear from them?)

They are talking, but that’s my point – no one is listening to sanity. If a conservative denounces the GOP’s rampant assholery, they are thrown to the wolves by their own party. It’s mutiny! The press ignores them because they aren’t saying anything worth printing. Why publish the blatantly obvious if it won’t grab eyeballs?

I think the reaction here is the uptick in female politicians calling them out on this BS. But so far, most of the female politicians are Democrats, and a female GOP politician cannot afford to undermine her support.

This is all just me supposing though. I invite some other theories. I’d love to be wrong here.

They are definitely out there, calling Glenn Beck a lunatic, wishing Sarah Palin would just go away (which she mostly has), and bemoaning the current state of the Republican party. They talk and write about it all the time.

The reason you don’t hear about it so much is twofold:

– These people have publishing relationships set up with conservative media outlets. They do not have relationships with liberal media outlets, so you won’t see them in liberal media outlets.

– The conservative media outlets will still publish what these dissenters write because it makes them feel like they’re fostering real debate, but it’s nowhere near the front page and hardly anyone who the message would resonate with ends up reading it because either; A) they don’t read the conservative media outlets at all, or B) those same media outlets do such a good job of hiding the material on the 6th page that those people who do read those outlets don’t see it.

Additionally, none of these voices end up on major mainstream media of either stripe because talking to them doesn’t result in a screaming match or a juicy lunatic soundbite. The mainstream media feeds on conflict and fosters the extreme views of their audience and guests because they’re more interested in ratings (or pushing their own agenda) than they are in healthy political debate.

To repeat what I said above: Conservative talking points are all the same, whether they’re said by frothing lunatics like Mourdoch or by “polite,” “respectable” conservatives like David Brooks. To wit, “I got mine, screw you, Jack,” and everything else that reinforces the status quo.

Brooks is in the New York Times, which rather destroys your claim that the mainstream media won’t listen to “sane” conservatives. He’s hardly the only right-winger they run, and most newspapers in this country are run by Republicans.

Rufus: He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the shit that gets carried out in His name – wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.
Bethany: Having beliefs isn’t good?
Rufus: I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier…
-abs is with Rufus, on almost all topics (Just look at Mary Magdalene, “Fine piece of ass” indeed, Rufus, you are a wise man)

It’s because of the attempt at a “middle-ground” position regarding abortion, between banning all abortion, and allowing it. (Which is, “ban abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or a danger to the mother’s health”.)

So, those that want all abortion banned aren’t accepting that “middle-ground” position, and are trying to discredit it by claiming rape isn’t as big of a deal as it is. (Or, in the case of Akin’s point of view, claiming that women will claim rape to get an abortion, which I could actually see happening in a “only in cases of rape, incest, or a danger to the mother’s health” situation, if a woman not getting an abortion would cause massive hardship (and, because we’re talking about the American “selectively orthodox pseudo-Jewish-plus-this-Christ-guy-that-is-ignored” theocracy here, there’s a lot more hardship if an unwed woman gets pregnant).)

Which is why the middle-ground position is just as crap as the banning all abortion position.

I grew up in the South and although I was brought up to believe that abortion was a reasonable option, I definitely heard the other side of the argument and in my heart believed abortion was morally wrong – but, still needed to be an option because sometimes it was pragmatically necessary.

However, when they had that situation in one of the Latin American countries that is 99% Catholic where the 9 year old girl was raped by her stepfather, and her mother helped her to get an abortion because at that age the girl’s life was in danger should she give birth, and the Catholic church excommunicated the mother with some garbled bullshit about how just because the girl had been raped it didn’t make it right for her to take the innocent life inside her I stopped believing that any of this anti-abortion stuff was about the little innocent babies.

I mean, what?, the 9 year old rape victim was not as innocent as the baby inside of her? What?

No, really, all this pretense about caring about the little unborn babies is about sticking it to women.

Good point on the Roman Catholics. However, their oposition to abortion in every circumstance speaks directly to their beliefs on the place of women in the world. It is the one exception to their pro-life stance. If the woman dies because the pregnancy was ectopic or the woman had stage IV cancer, they’re totally fine with that death. Some bullshit about God’s will get’s tossed out as an excuse for the inconsistency.

Because war and capital punishment are, in theory, justifiable killings of mentally competent and morally culpable human beings. (Plus the horrible reality of collateral maiming and killing of those who aren’t, but that’s largely a separate though related moral discussion since that’s not usually or necessarily the primary intended effect, as opposed to abortion where killing the innocent is the primary goal of the act.)

Assuming that (like me) one believes a human fetus is a human being even before birth, abortion is the killing of a human being who has no moral agency or competency and so no guilt, but is receiving capital punishment for the crime of existing.

I see the moral difference between executing a convicted rapist and executing the innocent product of his rape. I don’t see the moral difference between killing a child produced by rape one hour before when he or she might have been born vs. killing that child one hour after he or she has been born.

In the case of war, many innocent people including children, infants, and the unborn are killed, and yet war never seems to be as big an issue as abortion. We’ve had a war going on for 11 years, and these politicians (who are the only ones with the power to end the war) don’t seem to care. They keep going on about abortion.

And I guess my religious upbringing said that we are all born in sin, so that there is no such thing innocence. No moral agency or competency also means no knowledge of God.

So I still don’t understand how abortion is the biggest issue, or why the pro-life people aren’t as vocal in demanding an end to war and capital punishment (which has been abolished in 97 countries). If they were, I’d have a lot more respect for their position.

Assuming that (like me) one believes a human fetus is a human being even before birth, abortion is the killing of a human being who has no moral agency or competency and so no guilt, but is receiving capital punishment for the crime of existing.

That’s a rather histrionic way of stating it. If you want to represent your opponents’ position honestly it’s more like: the fetus’ supply of oxygenated blood is removed to restore the bodily autonomy of the person who is oxygenating that blood.

Have you heard the violinist thought experiment? Roughly: you wake up in a hospital bed. You’re covered with tubes that go to a machine and then more tubes go from the machine into a guy in the bed next to you. Doctor comes in and explains: “This man is the best violinist in the world but he has a rare kidney disease. We’re pumping his blood through your kidneys to keep him alive. If we disconnect either of you he will die.” Are you obligated to stay attached to the violinist to keep him alive? Would it be murder if you didn’t agree to remain hospitalized and prone to infection for the sake of keeping him alive? The pro-choice position isn’t that the fetus doesn’t have a right to life, but rather that this right doesn’t trump the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.

I don’t see the moral difference between killing a child produced by rape one hour before when he or she would have been born vs. killing that child one hour after he or she has been born.

Pop quiz hot shot: what percentage of abortions are performed within days of birth?

Where did I purport to “represent [my] opponents’ position”? I was attempting to represent own.

“Pop quiz hot shot: what percentage of abortions are performed within days of birth?

That’s a straw man argument and I think you know it.”

If there are any such abortions it’s not a straw man. But I also don’t see the moral difference between killing a child four months after birth versus four months before it would have been born naturally at full term.

Asserting that “letting die” is equivalent to “capital punishment for the crime of existing” is absolutely histrionic. Whether it’s “to my liking” is irrelevant.

If there are any such abortions it’s not a straw man.

No competent OB/GYN would perform one in such a situation unless the life of the mother was at stake and those of us who see it as a medical procedure are only advocating responsible use of the medical procedure. So still straw man.

But I also don’t see the moral difference between killing a child four months after birth versus four months before it would have been born naturally at full term.

There’s obviously a difference. A baby born 4 months premature requires drastic medical interventions to survive whereas a 4-month old needs standard baby care. A baby born a few days “premature” isn’t really premature at all, so this is actually different from the “day before/day after” example as well. Again, “allowing to die” is not equivalent to “killing” unless you’re engaging in hyperbole (aka “histrionics”).

Mourdock further explained Tuesday night after the debate that he did not believe God intended the rape, but that God is the only one who can create life.

Okay, dude. Let’s stop everyone from engaging in anything that could result in conception and then we’ll see how many lives God decides to create. I guess God will get so pissed at us for not having intercourse that he’ll just let the human race die out.

That’s what I hate about the “God wanted it that way” explanation, you can shoehorn it into any situation regardless of the level of absurdity.

When will people learn that saying that “God intended” things or “(insert natural disaster here) was God’s response to” stuff in order to prove your point is BLASPHEMY? I mean it, actual blasphemy. You are using God’s name in vain. You can go to Hell for that, if you believe in it like you say you do.

There are a lot of christian faiths that preach exactly that, Catholicism being the most notable. For some, the doctrine of free will is so centrally important to the concept of salvation that any belief that could possibly undermine free will is instantly heresy. Unfortunately, evangelicals and baptists (the majority of Christian US Congressmen) don’t see the world that way, and the Catholic church does an absolutely pathetic job of communicating or teaching their doctrines to their laity so most Catholics aren’t really Catholic except in a purely superficial sense.

So in the end, the whole “religion helps people be moral” argument is kind of hollow in practical terms.

Fortunately, the morning-after pill is another gift from your Sky Guy, and if conception is prevented by taking that pill, then it must be what your Sky Guy intended. So, um, why are some folks so hell bent on trying to thwart the intentions of your Sky Guy?

I don’t see how he can think rape isn’t an act of god, but the conception from that rape IS an act of god. If god wanted that conception to happen, then he wanted the rape to happen too, there’s no way around it.

I have a friend who had a life that makes Job’s look like a walk in the park. She was adopted. From the age of 6 until she was 18 she was repeatedly raped by her (adopted) father and a worker in their home (her family was wealthy, so all the kids at her school envied her wonderful life).

Naturally she fantasized about her birth mother, and when she got married and out of the abusive home she managed to track down the lady. That’s when my friend discovered that she was given up for adoption because she was conceived during a rape. Her birth mother wanted nothing to do with her.

My friend practices Buddhism. Spirituality has helped her to deal with a life of gothic horror.

Still, just because embracing spirituality has helped her to cope with what she has been given, that does not mean that everyone should be forced into more than they can bear in order to find God. Spirituality can help us to cope with suffering, but inflicting suffering is not spiritual.

Thank you for your kind offer. My friend has a lot of support and talks pretty openly about her experience, so I felt comfortable talking about it here. Even though this an anonymous comment about a person I kept anonymous, I wouldn’t have shared her terrible experience if she herself did not speak about it so openly. Fortunately, she does have a support group around her, both with family, friends, and Internet relationships.

My understanding, such as it is, of Buddhism is that I’m an idea in my own mind, and that others share a version of that idea with me, as I do their ideas of themselves. But, we aren’t real, in the sense that I is just a term I give to an imaginary self, that has no independent reality. How can something that doesn’t exist have free will? Is anybody asking this question?

Believing in “a limited role of government” is part and parcel of these people being so disgusting. They don’t believe that government should step in to protect the weak from the strong, whether it’s workers form employers, women from men, GLBT people from straight/cis people, children from abusive adults, or religious minorities from religious majorities.

There are a couple of things I see going on here; both in this story, and the replies.

One is that the word “GOD” has a lot of baggage. If we change it to “universe” it’s a little more comprehensive, as we can understand that when Sperm meets Egg, the “universe” intends them to join, divide and divide some more, and it matters not how they met. (Rape/Love/Petri-dish… it’s all good.) Yay science!

The second problematic word here that seems to trip us all up is “intended”. Put “God” next to “intended” in a sentence and it conjures up an image of a being (Sky Guy) deciding to do something. It’s this concept that needs to die.

What we seem to have is universe where shit just happens. Good shit, bad shit – shit. Maybe “GOD” did it, maybe the “universe” let it happen, it’s debatable. But what’s not debatable is that whatever it was that happened – rape, incest, fun sex that lead to an unwanted pregnancy – happened. It’s what we decide to feel about the situation [or any situation] that’s important.

For some people, a rape baby is too much and would be a horrible burden for the mother. Incredibly, in other cases, the baby is seen as a gift, like a lotus from the shit-bog, and is loved deeply, sometimes becoming a touchstone for the mother and all the people that help and support them. Truly, great things can arise from the vilest of situations. But these are deeply personal experiences and highly subjective.

At the end of the day, regardless of what this guy – or anyone believes is the root cause, the question remains: What are we going to do now? And it’s here that I see the Republicans fall on their face. They tend to look at the minutia and argue points of logic or morals while people that need help – that they could actively be helping – suffer with the business of living.

Personally I don’t give a flying-fuck-at-a-rolling-donught what God thinks about any given situation. We can talk about that after we’ve clothed the naked, fed the starving and reached enlightenment. Or when I’m dead, I’ll take it up with him personally.

I am a Christian and I have to say that this discussion is FANTASTIC. With few exceptions (all the batsh*t crazy comments), all of you are very eloquent, thoughtful and really make some excellent points. My view is that God is the creator of everything and is aware of all that has, does and will happen. However, God certainly doesn’t control everything. God CAN control everything, but does not. God created nature. When a tornado blast through a town, nature did that, not God. God CAN intervene when His people call on Him, but otherwise nature continues. So why doesn’t He stop every tornado? You know there are people praying against it. A few reasons. If He answered every prayer in the way WE wanted, it would no longer be HIS plan. We don’t know what will come in the future from events, He does. We, as Christians, try not to ask WHY God does things, but rather have a conscious understanding that it is all His will, not ours. Proof of His separation from controlling everything is right up front in Genesis, where Adam took a bit of the apple on the tree of knowledge. God certainly knew he would do it, but Adam CHOSE to do it. It’s all about living with our decisions and the consequences of our actions.

I strongly encourage you all to continue these discussions you’re having with folks on here and with your friends. I wasn’t a Christian for the first 25 years of my life and actually hated “Christians” because of their hypocricy. I saw folks say “I am a Christian” and then cuss, hate people, beat their children and other such atrocities. It wasn’t until I entered the church and met some REAL Christians (one of whom is now my father-in-law!) than I began to see God’s work and His plan. Never, EVER confuse people that proclaim that they are “Christians” with true Christians or even with God. Christians SHOW that they are Christian, they don’t just say it. Rarely will you hear a true Christian, you will simply see them helping, talking, or doing something good for someone else. I am by far not a perfect Christian, but I believe I am very accepting and understanding of those struggling with the world around them. It’s a confusing, hate-filled world, littered with atrocities, but these are things created by man, not God. God created us; we created this mess!

I certainly appreciate your willingness to post your views in a forum that you know is probably not very sympathetic to them, and hesitate to respond too pointedly. However, and briefly, you must understand that the view you set forth makes no logical sense (of course faith-based opinion inherently eschew logic):

You state “God is the creator of everything and is aware of all that has, does and will happen. However, God certainly doesn’t control everything.” But if God created everything, and at the time of its creation saw everything that would happen due to that creation, he did/does control everything.

Your example of Adam and the apple is illustrative: you state that “God certainly knew he would do it, but Adam CHOSE to do it.” So, God created Adam and simultaneoulsy knew all of the consequences of that creation, including the apple-eating. Thus, while God may have given Adam the ability to believe he had a choice in the matter, but in fact he did not; it was pre-ordained at the time of Adam’s creation (in other words, base on your view, God forces us to feel guilty for “choices” we in fact cannot make).

As others have state in this blog, and since the beginning of Christianity (and probably before), the concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing creator God is incompatible with the concept of free will. Hence Presbyterians.

We have NO idea how God thinks or why He does the things He does. We don’t attempt to say we know, because the thought would be futile. Predetermination and predestination aren’t exclusive from free will. Perhaps God got bored of knowing everything and He Himself chose not to see the future and thus granted us free will. Can someone who is all-knowing and all-powerful grant himself the ability to make himself not all-knowing and thus not really be all-knowing? It’s a futile argument. It’s one of those “Can God make a rock big enough that He can’t move?” things. We, as Christians, choose to believe what the Bible has for us to believe. We do certainly make concessions for our time as we learn more (don’t touch dead things, don’t eat pork). We learn why He said those things for the people of the time as they were very dangerous. Now they aren’t. Christianity isn’t devoid of science and intelligence, it simply accounts for things that science can’t explain and gives us hope that there is more to us than accidental chemistry.

We have NO idea how God thinks or why He does the things He does. We don’t attempt to say we know, because the thought would be futile.

Incompatible with:

God CAN control everything, but does not. God created nature. When a tornado blast through a town, nature did that, not God. God CAN intervene when His people call on Him, but otherwise nature continues. So why doesn’t He stop every tornado? You know there are people praying against it. A few reasons. If He answered every prayer in the way WE wanted, it would no longer be HIS plan. We don’t know what will come in the future from events, He does.

Once again, Christians claim to know an awful lot about the mind of this God guy that we can supposedly know nothing about.

We are human. We are curious. We try to understand things even if we can’t. How was the universe formed? How did humans come into existence? Why does anyone care about the Kardashians? These are the questions that will puzzles minds for the rest of time. However, just because I say “this is what *I* believe” certainly doesn’t make it right, it’s just how I choose to understand it. There are no easy answers. I believe that God created the universe. Did He do it by starting the Big Bang? Sure, it’s possible. If so, who created God? Did God create Himself? Heck if I know. Does evolution exist? Absolutely and without doubt. That is scientifically proven and I have no doubt in it. Does that mean that man originated from apes? No, not necessarily, it just means that things DO evolve in nature. Understanding God just means understanding that there is something out there more powerful than we are. Someone that cares for us and watches over us. If you nitpick what I say, you’ll always find fault. I’m human. But I also believe that God is real and that Jesus was His son, died on the cross for me, and is alive in Heaven today. It’s my belief and I’m certain of it.

I can take GUESSES about it, but frankly I’ve not researched it a lot. Menstruating, perhaps, due to blood being on the woman’s hand due to poor living conditions. Pretty sure there weren’t tampons back then! Horse meat and rabbit meat, not sure where that reference is in the Bible. If you tell me, I can read it over and see if I can extrapolate anything from it.

As for the Midianites, there is a GREAT and VERY DETAILED description of the historical events of the time. Remember, as with any historical text, you MUST have reference and understanding of the times and the cultures to see why certain things happened. Here is that page:

As for women… well… they kind of have the shaft when it comes to power in the Bible. That verse was written by a man to a church and not directed by God. Although everything in the Bible is accurate, that doesn’t mean that everything was God’s word. This was the author’s personal feeling of how women should act and be. There are other references to women participating in events far more that this example, but hey, the guy was a bit old-fashioned. :)

“I can take GUESSES about it, but frankly I’ve not researched it a lot.”

But you seem to know for a fact that God told people these things for good reasons. I’m trying to find out what these ‘good reasons’ are, or if God’s warning against pork was just one lucky guess in how to prevent trichinosis, among many ridiculous rules.

“Menstruating, perhaps, due to blood being on the woman’s hand due to
poor living conditions. Pretty sure there weren’t tampons back then!”

Oh gee. Where to start. Blood is indeed considered unclean in the Old Testament. But what makes menstrual blood so much dirtier than say, feces? Women who are menstruating must be separated from the rest of the tribe, and anything she touches while menstruating is considered unclean for a man to touch. Why is it that anyone who has a bowel movement isn’t likewise separated from the rest of the tribe for a while, and everything they touch considered unclean? After all, they didn’t have Charmin Fresh Wipes back then.

RE: Horse and rabbit meat, that comes from Leviticus. It’s the same verses that forbid pork– No eating of land-walking animals that don’t both have cloven hooves AND chew cud. Pigs have cloven hooves (or feet, depending on how biologically accurate you wanna be) but do not chew cud, therefore they’re treif. Horses have don’t have cloven hooves, therefore they’re treif. Rabbits chew cud but don’t have hooves at all, therefore they’re treif.

The Christian Think Thank apologist page you link to doesn’t seem to address my concerns about God ordering the killing of children. From my reading of it, they don’t find any problem at all with killing women for ‘tempting’ and corrupting Israelite men. (How dare they!) Or with the killing of male children. (There was no social welfare system back then, so…. Kill the boys and take the girls as non-sexual household helpers. How nice of them.) Why couldn’t the almighty God rain manna upon the Israelites so that they could have taken in and fed the male children too?

“As for women… well… they kind of have the shaft when it comes to power in the Bible.”

And yet the Bible is taken as a Holy Book, even though it puts half the human population in a position of subservience to the other. Why didn’t God tell the Israelites to treat women as complete and equal members of society? He didn’t have trouble ordering his people to do or not do all sorts of other things.

I certainly wouldn’t worship a God who put up with his people treating women as lesser than men.

Oh, the good ones come from God, the rest is random chance. Like when a tornado doesn’t hit you or if the local sports team wins (and beats the point spread), that’s God. You can tell when they point that finger upward. When the local sports team’s opponents lose, that’s just random chance.

Being thankful is different than saying He did it. The touchdown pointing upward is thanking God for the gifts and abilities He has granted us, not the actual action. We are thankful that we are ABLE to do things, not that God does them for us. When a tornado does strike us, we are thankful that it didn’t, but we are also remorseful for those it did strike and try to help them with the situation using the gifts God has granted us. We don’t walk in and say “What did you do wrong?!” we walk in and say “How can we help?”

A “real” xtian is one who believes in the divinity and resurrection of Christ. That’s it. You don’t get to disown the bad ones and pretend they have nothing to do with you or don’t share the same theology.

Incidentally, “they’re not REAL Christians” is a big fucking insult to those of us whose ancestors were persecuted by xtians. It whitewashes xtian history.

I’m confused. If someone came to you and stabbed you for no reason and they said that God told them to do it, they would be lying because God tells us not to murder (murder being killing without cause). I can SAY I’m a Christian and then go beat and rape my Children. Does that mean I’m a Christian because I SAID I was? Not, my actions show I am not a REAL Christian. I can SAY I’m the greatest hacker in the world, but when I can’t demonstrate how to remove a password from Windows, those that know hacking would quickly begin doubting I’m a hacker. We, as Christians, are often surrounded by those that SAY they are Christian, but act in a way we know is not Christian and we attempt to talk with them and get them back on the right path. If someone claimed they were a Christian and they wronged you, then they, most likely, weren’t actually Christian.

About No True Scotsman? Sure. Just because you point to it doesn’t make it right! I’m certainly not an apologist. I’m not apologizing for what real Christians have done. I understand the concept, but it’s not easily applied to all situations. I don’t understand why everyone has to be classified the same. You certainly wouldn’t want to be classified with all atheists (if that’s your view). Some atheists love killing animals. Some atheists eat human flesh. Some atheists enjoy masochism So, I guess because some enjoy doing those things, that means ALL atheists are that way, right? You can CHOOSE to do things and then BLAME it on religion, but that doesn’t mean it is the fault of the religion or of its members. Christians do have a basic set of guidelines and if you don’t follow them, you’re not being Christian. It’s pretty simple, really. There are grey areas and there are extremists, but when it comes to some of the stuff “Christians” have done, it’s pretty easy to see that they aren’t really Christian. Take Westboro Baptist Church. They SAY they are Christian, but anyone with any rational mind at all can easily see they aren’t Christian and that’s not what the Bible says to do. Al Qaeda bombed the twin towers. Does that mean that ALL muslims believe in terrorism? Of course not. That’s crazy. Islam is, at it’s very core, very peaceful and does not support that type of action so I, as a Christian, would never hold those attacks against Islam because that was just some nut jobs using a perversion of the Quran to do evil. Many humans really like evil and will justify it any way they can.

And, for the record, I’m certainly not claiming that true Christians are perfect. They aren’t. But they TRY and live a life that is devoid of evil. They make mistakes. The ask for forgiveness. They try and do better. They don’t try and find loopholes in the Bible to hurt people. That’s not the focus of the Bible. The Bible is about peace and salvation and living a good life, leading others to live a good life. If you’re using the Bible for evil and to do bad things, you’re not being a Christian.

When someone makes a comment like this Richard Mourdock guy has, why is it that the first thing everyone starts debating about is the merits to a belief in God? The problem with this statement is not the belief in God, but the belief that a first trimester fetus is a “life” that should be represented- whether made by rape or not.
If it can’t survive on its own outside the womb, then it should be considered part of the woman hosting it and not a life of its own. The problem with a pro-life position is it is not an educated by science position. Start debating crazy comments like this at the point of whether or not human life actually begins at conception. I don’t think it does and I think science could make a good case for that.
I am a Christian who believes in God and His plan. Also, I have been through a miscarriage at 11.5 weeks. I can’t believe life begins at conception, because then I would have to believe that the vast number of pregnancies that end in miscarriage are actually pregnancies that end in suicide. I am not pro-life because then I wouldn’t be showing others the same love that God shows me by giving me free will.
But really I don’t understand why so many people who say they don’t believe in or care about God themselves waste time debating about His existence and effect on the world. Isn’t the logical thing to use science to debunk these “pro-life” excuses to limit people’s freedoms?

So religion does not physically affect women and their freedoms?
You can talk all you want about liberal Christianity, but there are not many who are not religious who are calling for taking away women’s freedoms about their own bodies. Ignoring God and religion is like fighting the symptoms instead of the disease. You are ignoring the inherent misogyny of Western religions. And by doing so you are allowing it to continue.

Would you call me an evangelical if I were pointing out the foibles of astrologers?

It doesn’t matter if you believe in the stars, a God or nothing at all. If you don’t have enough respect to let people have their own faith and their own system of beliefs without passing judgement on them for it, you are an evangelical in your heart.

To not be able to see that this politician has a view on abortion that is defined by his cultural and generational experiences more than by his belief in God, you are just falling into the same trap he has fallen into: using beliefs to justify why your views are superior, because you having nothing else to use.

Doing things in the name of what God wants; doing things because God doesn’t exist; doing things because the sun rose at a certain angle to your box garden today…. these are all excuses to not take responsibility for your own actions, your own thoughts.

Richard Mourdock is using God to hide behind an opinion he knows is not popular, he knows is not informed, he knows is an infringement of freedoms. If he didn’t have God as a shield he would most definitely lose his job. But attacking him for believing in God is the course of action that makes the most sense? no, because when you are evangelical making sense doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone tells you you’re right.

But would he have those beliefs except for a very popular interpretation of an old book that coincidentally? has been used to support the subjugation of women for thousands of years?

My respect for other belief systems ends when those belief systems are actively causing harm to others. Think about the Catholic Church’s teachings against condoms in Africa and how many people that hurts while at the same time liberal Catholics in the Western World support it through donations while ignoring it in their personal lives.

If you want to defend some generic spiritual notion of a diety who does not interfere in the world and has little to say about how we live our lives, then I am probably not going to comment. But when you bring Christianity into it, you are bringing with you a lot of baggage that you should not be surprised to be called out on. Claiming that your narrow (unpopular) view of Christianity is the “right” one is just as ridiculous as claiming that you have special insight into the mind of a leprechaun.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe in the stars, a God or nothing at all. If you don’t have enough respect to let people have their own faith and their own system of beliefs without passing judgement on them for it, you are an evangelical in your heart.”

You’re entitled to your own OPINIONS. Not to your own FACTS. Your beliefs don’t deserve respect just because they’re your beliefs. If you can’t back them up with facts, I’m not obliged to respect shit, especially if you’re trying to change the laws to support your beliefs.

I am an atheist and that is that. Keep lying to yourself that not being superstitious is just another type of superstition.
There are a lot of people who make no sense at all one more or less doesnt make a difference.

Maybe if your co-religionists weren’t shoving god down the throats of the rest of us, we wouldn’t feel so much need to talk about the subject.

And I agree with Nowimnothing in that religion — especially, but not exclusively, Abrahamic religion — is a major conduit for this type of evil. Abrahamic religion is all about submitting to $DEITY. From this naturally follows the call to submit to those who claim to be made more in $DEITY’s image than others, or those who claim to speak for $DEITY.

It’s a matter of interpretation of the words. Including the headline of this article (think positive/negative space in art). Some (usually the ‘conservative christians’) see this for it’s face value. “It is something that God intended to happen.” His constituents will read “God intended that child be born from rape,” with the focus being mainly on the child, and nothing more. Because that’s what the argument is about for them: the child being born or the child not being born. Intellectuals (like ourselves) and well-reasoned members of society see the negative space left by this article. That it’s God’s Will for a woman to be raped. Do you see the chalice, or the 2 people looking at each other? i guess it depends on what candidate you support.

Yeah, I guess if you just white out the woman’s life, wants, needs, feelings, health, existing relationships, etc. etc., you can pretend that all those things are the equivalent of a ball of cells with the potential to become human.